30 parts Ongoing The Aeon Below
Deep beneath the frozen ribs of the mountain lies a place the world pretends not to see, the Cave of the Dead, a place where light dies and the air itself hums with mourning.
They say those who venture in never come back sane..if they come back at all.
For centuries, no one has reached its final chamber - a cathedral vast and golden, carved for gods long forgotten. No one... until Dahlia.
A down-on-her-luck woman desperate to escape her parasitic relatives, Dahlia joins an expedition to explore the cave, hoping to make enough money to buy her peace. Instead, she finds him, a corpse that isn't quite dead, standing before a massive flat monolith that flickers like a tomb-screen, each word it shows pulsing with thought.
A being who calls himself Caelir, once a god, now fallen and bound as the barrier between the living and the underworld.
When Dahlia accidentally touches the Black Salt Stone, she gives Caelir what he's been waiting centuries for: a tether to her mind. From that moment on, his voice curls through her thoughts like smoke, mocking, taunting, amused.
For the first time in hundreds of years, he's not alone. For the first time in her life, Dahlia has someone who listens though she wishes he wouldn't.
But Caelir's interest in Dahlia isn't mercy.
To awaken his preserved body, to tear free of his prison, he must drain the soul of the one who touched the Stone...her.
And though he tells himself it's inevitable, her stubborn humor, her greed, and her defiance begin to unravel something inside him, something dangerously human.
As Dahlia delves deeper into the cave's labyrinth of death, she realizes that her worst enemy isn't the whispers of the dead...
It's the voice inside her head.
~~~
Early draft, being revised for publication elsewhere.